Wednesday, 18 September 2013

AdRants: Not Charmed by Charmin

While most advertising campaigns are forgettable, there are some that are so bad, annoying, or gross that it actively makes me not want to buy their products.

Charmin toilet paper has just such an ad campaign: A family of pooping bears that cares way too much about toilet paper usage. Case in point...

The Charmin ads don't just have these bears using toilet paper, dancing with toilet paper, sleeping on toilet paper, or making love while rolling around in toilet paper. No, the focus of this campaign is the First World Problem that certain toilet paper brands leave bits of paper behind after you wipe.

Witness Mama Bear inspecting her child's ass for these naughty paper bits, much like Oberbefehlshaber der KriegsmarineKarl Dönitz inspecting the German U-boats before their launch. (Why the reference? It's obvious this bear family is German, given their love of poop)

My memory isn't what is once was, but I can't recall my mother ever looking at my anal sphincter to see if my butt crack was free of a paper trail. Yes, this bear family has a special inspection area you have to go through every time you dump a load.

Using cutesy animals in ad campaigns is nothing new, but WHY WOULD BEARS EVER NEED OR USE TOILET PAPER? Would this ad campaign ever fly if real humans were used? Of course not!

Whilst walking down the trails around Tofino, we came across a LOT of bear scat. Not once did we see any used toilet paper bits next to the piles of digested berries and fish.

I'm sorry, but seeing bears with fragments of used toilet paper on their bottoms is disgusting. When I'm eating dinner in front of the TV, I'd rather hear about feminine hygiene products than see this crap (pun intended).

Thus, I make a point not to buy this product, even when on sale. Somebody needs to pay the price for burning these haunting images into my head!